Saturday, September 18, 2010

Just for fun: Oldest living things on Earth

Rachel Sussman is an artist who has made it her life’s mission to photograph the oldest living things on Earth. To that end, she has traveled all around the world, categorizing organisms that have lived for over 2000 years.

Here’s an example of her work: a 2000 year old sunland baobab tree from Limpopo Province, South Africa.

You can view the rest of her portfolio, read her blog, or see a map showing where she found the various organisms. Better yet, watch her TED talk, below.

Stochastic Scientist? What's up with that?

Why the Stochastic Scientist? As I'm sure you all know, 'stochastic' is another word for 'random', which is what I intend for the focus of this blog. Although my formal training is as a molecular biologist, there are many other fields of science that are also fascinating and beautiful. It's my intention to blog about which ever scientific discovery or invention catches my, and hopefully your, fancy.

I also hope to inspire people to learn more about science. By choosing among a huge variety of scientific endeavors, I'll undoubtably hit upon something that will pique my readers' interest.

I guess I could have called my blog 'The Joy of Science', but that wouldn't have been quite so random.